Madoff Programmers Hid Scam, Had Crisis of Conscience

Madoff Programmers Hid Scam, Had Crisis of Conscience - 11/13/2009

Home

Index of Filings

News and Press Releases

Filings

Decisions

Settlements

Litigation Activity Indices

Top Ten List

Annual/Quarterly Updates

Clearinghouse Research

Articles & Papers

Search

Related Sites

About Us

Local Rules

Sponsors

Register

_______________
Copyright © 2001
Stanford Law School

2009 News and Press Releases

SEARCH

News	News 2009
HEADLINES \| SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS \| COURT FILINGS LINKS TO OTHER NEWS \| NEWS ARCHIVE	HEADLINES ARCHIVED SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS ARCHIVED

HEADLINE NEWS:

Madoff Programmers Hid Scam, Had Crisis of Conscience
David Scheer and Joshua Gallu

Bloomberg. November 13, 2009
_________________________________________________________________________

EXCERPT: Two of Bernard Madoff’s former computer programmers were sued by U.S. regulators for allegedly helping to hide his fraud for more than 15 years and trying to cover their tracks after a “crisis of conscience” in 2006. Jerome O’Hara, 46, and George Perez, 43, wrote programs to generate fake trade blotters, stock records and other documents to back nonexistent transactions, the Securities and Exchange Commission said today in a statement announcing its civil lawsuit. “Without the help of O’Hara and Perez, the Madoff fraud would not have been possible,” George Canellos, head of the SEC’s New York office, said in the statement. “They used their special computer skills to create sophisticated, credible and entirely phony trading records that were critical to the success of Madoff’s scheme for so many years.” […] Madoff and his lieutenant Frank DiPascali, routinely asked the programmers for help creating records that blended real transactions at his brokerage with the fictitious balances in investor accounts, the SEC said. Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty in July. DiPascali, who also pleaded guilty, is awaiting sentencing. “O’Hara and Perez had a crisis of conscience in 2006 and tried to cover their tracks,” the SEC said in the statement. They allegedly sought to delete about 218 of 225 so-called special programs from a computer, known as “House 17,” used to process money management account data. They didn’t delete the monthly backup tapes, the SEC said.

Back to News page | Back to Archived News 2009 page | Back to Top

�